Guide To Tolerance Sparks N.y. Battle

December 22, 1992|By George E. Curry, Chicago Tribune.

NEW YORK — A curriculum guide designed to help New York City teachers foster more tolerance among their students has brought out intolerance among adults, leading to death threats, shoving matches, suspension of a community school board and accusations that school officials are encouraging gay and lesbian lifestyles.

Last week, a meeting of the Board of Education was adjourned abruptly after one speaker said the school system`s teacher guide, Children of the Rainbow, was designed for ``gay white males and no one else`` and quarrels broke out among other spectators.

The tension in New York, which has the nation`s largest public school system with nearly 1 million students, underscores a national debate over how best to teach elementary school pupils to have tolerance for homosexual men and lesbians.

At issue in New York is a 443-page guide for 1st grade teachers. One of the most controversial passages of the book notes:

``Teachers of 1st graders have an opportunity to give children a healthy sense of identity at an early age. Classes should include references to lesbian/gay people in all curricula areas and should avoid exclusionary practices by presuming a person`s sexual orientation, reinforcing stereotypes, or speaking of lesbians/gays as `they` or `other.` ``

Another section talks about ``the changing concept of family`` and says,

``Children of lesbian/gay parents may have limited experience with male/

female parental situations; if there is no representation of their lives in the classroom, they may suddenly be made to feel different.``

Among the pictures in a section headed ``families`` are two women, their arms around each other, standing with a young boy. And the suggested reading list includes titles such as ``Daddy`s Roommate,`` ``Heather Has Two Mommies`` and ``Gloria Goes to Gay Pride,`` a reference to an annual parade in New York and other cities.

Few people have been more outspoken in opposition to the teacher guide than Mary Cummins, president of Community School Board 24 in the borough of Queens.

``It`s homosexual indoctrination and don`t let anyone tell you it isn`t,`` said Cummins, a grandmother who has lead marches on public school chancellor Joseph Fernandez`s office.

``In other school districts, the parents are up in arms. Unfortunately, they don`t have people on their board with enough guts to tell this guy to go to hell.``

The chancellor and Cummins each have told the other where to go, in actions if not in words. Both claim to have received death threats because of their positions.

Fernandez ordered the city`s 32 local districts, each with its own elected board, to either use the teacher guide or develop an alternative one. Board 24 refused.

On Dec. 1, Fernandez annouced he was suspending Board 24 indefinitely. He explained: ``I am truly saddened that we have had to come to this. Saddened by the irony that teaching children the fourth R-respect for their neighbors and themselves-has brought on the hateful condemnations that I have heard over the last several months.``

In a move that seemed to indicate Fernandez`s $195,000-a-year contract will not be renewed next year, the central Board of Education overruled the chancellor and reinstated Board 24.

The chancellor has said repeatedly that he would not object if Board 24 wanted to delay discussing gay families until the 5th or 6th grade, as many other districts had done. Fernandez said the guide was advisory, but Cummins disputed that interpretation.

``If this was a suggested guide, how could he suspend us for not putting it in? The man is talking in riddles,`` she said.

Fernandez also said he was willing to use a mediator to resolve the standoff and offered his staff`s help in coming up with a proposal acceptable to each side.

Fernandez`s office has proposed to soften some of the language in the guide, but the chancellor has been clear in his determination to alter the curriculum.

``Make no mistake: There will be no changing the requirement that, at some time in the elementary grades, diverse family structures be recognized and acknowledged as loving, caring households,`` he said.

Children of the Rainbow grew out of a 1989 board resolution directing the chancellor to take appropriate steps to help curb discrimination based on

Between the time that directive was issued and publication of the guide, there were a series of bureaucratic bungling, according to some members of the chancellor`s staff.

In fact, the Multicultural Advisory Board, which helped prepare the guide, recommended that two books-``Heather Has Two Mommies`` and ``Gloria Goes to Gay Pride``-be dropped from the reading list. But that never was done, and even Fernandez acknowledged he never had read all of the guide after it was written.

Frances Kunreuther, executive director of the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a non-profit group that operates an alternative high school for gay students, said she was surprised by the furor over Children of the Rainbow.

``All we`re talking about is when you talk about families, say some people live in a family with two mommies, some people live in families with a mommy and a daddy, some people live in families with one mommy or one daddy, some people live with two daddies,`` she said.

``If you know any 6-year-olds, that`s all they want to hear anyway. They`re not interested in any more.``